Educators have long questioned why some students can experience achievement more easily in some school subjects/curriculum, but not in others. We argue that learners cannot ignore navigating two key features inherent within every curriculum--its cognitive demands as well as its opportunities for access to knowledge that are the twin foci of this study. We adopt Specialisation codes from Legitimation Code Theory to examine the epistemic and social relations of intended learning outcomes from secondary science- and arts-based curricula in mainland China. The results showed that science curricula coded predominately with knowledge codes, but the latter possessed mainly elite codes. Compared to science, the Chinese arts curriculum is therefore more challenging for learners because achievement here is largely dependent on possession of specific attributes, dispositions, or qualities that can potentially restrict access. Implications for improving teaching and learning in these two types of curriculum in this region are discussed.